breath

I thought I would take a moment and sit down here to do some writing and share what I have been up to lately. I have recently started putting more time towards developing some acrylic paintings. Most or much of my focus these days goes towards developing my art business. So a big point for me that I have been walking for some time is the relationship between Art and Money. But this could also be understood as the relationship between ones passions and making money with ones passions. I am not sure how rare my situation is but I decided that I would pursue creating and selling art, essentially my passion, as how I would make my primary income and it has been an interesting journey. For the first 10 years after I graduated art school and begun pursuing my passion of creating art and turning that into my career, I never really sold much art and just found other ways to make money. My approach back then was simply to create art and frankly I never made art to sell. In fact I believed that if I was making art to sell then I would be a Sell Out and so I steered clear of that and went for a kind of purity (or so I believed) of just expressing myself and not bothering to worry about if it sold or not, though, I actually did want it to sell and I did want to make money off of it. Although during that time, even though I wasn’t really creating art with the mindset of making it to sell, I did still have external influences from the perspective of I did want other people to like what I was doing, they didn’t have to buy it, they just had to like it. But that is whole other point for a different blog.

After a time away from doing art as my primary focus I got back into it about 4 or 5 years ago and this time I ended up in a situation where I was making it and selling it and surviving off of it. Though the art I was making you could say was more geared towards a particular market or aesthetic preference that wasn’t necessarily my personal preference. And this has been quite a challenge for me to essentially take a subject or style that is not necessarily ‘my preference’ and then to find myself in it, to, Make it My Own so to speak.

I will also add here that “My Preference” is definitely something I am still getting to know and so am willing to do things that I believe are not my preference to actually investigate them deeply and see if I can connect to it on some level because honestly “my preference” I realize has been greatly influenced, directed, impulsed by my culture, parents, peers, society, ect, so I have am definitely willing to challenge “my preference” and to make actually walk that process of really understanding what it means to get to know Myself on a deep level and understand what I do really personally like and enjoy and make sure this is not just something that someone told me I like or I thought I was supposed to like it because everyone else did. Okay back to my point…

Over time and more so lately I have begun putting more time into painting and developing this more marketable line of work. And the question I have been walking and attempting to find the balance within is, that line between creating art to sell, that is marketable, and creating art for me where I can add my personal touch and take the art in directions that is more about my personal self expression and making sure that in the end the artwork contains depth and substance, than just making something to sell.

Okay going to add some Self Forgiveness Here.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear what other people will think about me if I create art that is marketable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not consider that one can make marketable art that still has depth, substance, and quality.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to be distracted or dissuaded by my fears in a way where I don’t give myself the opportunity to test the theory of creating art that is marketable but also still has ME and My personal touch on it where I can create the depth, quality, and substance that I would like to.

I commit myself to assist and support myself to develop a style that is both marketable as well as having substance, quality, and depth to it so I can be proud and happy with the work I create.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to define myself as a sell-out if I create art that is marketable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to allow my fears to get the best of me where I will stop before even giving myself the chance to explore various ways of creating the Depth that I would like into my art while at the same time having it be something marketable and sellable.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to go into EGO within thinking “I am too good” to make art that sells, meaning where I essentially believe and have also judged others as “Just making art to sell” and believing that this compromises the artistic integrity within the art.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to want my art to be good and fear diluting it through its relationship with money, but then not take this point BACK TO SELF and consider how HOW I LIVE and WHO I AM in my daily life within and without is for instance compromised by money or ultimately where I am actually compromising Myself and my own Quality and Substance by allowing myself to live in ways that is not best for me, but then divert my attention off of myself and just obsess about my art when the Real point here Should be about WHO I AM for real in real life because Who I am is what really matters.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear other people knowing that I am making art that is marketable because I fear they will lose respect for me and they will stop respecting the art I make.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear that people think I am selling out.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to fear what other people think about me when what other people think about me is Not who I actually am, and who I actually am is what really matters and that is something that I Live and Walk and Express day by day and I am essentially the Gatekeeper of Who I am and am Responsible for who I am and must answer to myself with regards to what I accept and allow of and as myself and so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget that Who I am and How I live moment to moment is really What Matters in this world

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to get caught up in the surface dimension of worrying what other people think about my art and if they think I am selling out when this is like an irrational fear that is actually removed from who I am and what I live in real physical substance day to day and moment to moment.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to influenced and directed by fear energy and anxiety energy in relation to what I thought or think people think about my art.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to focus too much on what my art looks like where it becomes a form of obsession where in I forget about ME and Taking Care of Myself and Working on points within myself to assist and support me to become and live to my utmost potential.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to obsess over my art and if other people will like it, and end up neglecting Myself and Working with myself in a process of Self Creation to become a Self that I am Satisfied and Happy with.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to ignore working on my inner reality through regular Self Writing and Self Forgiveness as a point of actually supporting myself to Correct, Change, and Transform those parts of myself that I see are not what they could be or are supporting me within my utmost potential. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to forget to work on these aspects of self, and just focus all of my attention outside of myself into my art, and art business.

I commit myself to LIVE HERE, and to when and as I see myself going into that dimension of obsessing about what others might think about my art, to stop and take and in breath, and within the exhale, I slow myself down and bring myself back to the moment and back to here and realize that what Really Matters is WHO I AM and that when I start worrying about what other people think about my art and how that reflects on me, I realize that here I am actually OFF POINT and so I bring myself back to THEE POINT which is ME and Self and Who I am within myself and How I am LIVING moment to moment and I commit myself to assist and support myself to place my attention HERE onto me and to assist and support myself to work on Myself and What Really Matters which is Who I am in each and every moment, So that I can stand and face myself and look myself in the Eye, and know that I am Living my Best Self and be actually truly Satisfied and Content with myself, and Love Myself.

Okay so the point that is actually coming through here, which I was thinking that this blog would be about anyways, is not so much about the relationship between ones passions and making money with ones passions, but rather when ones Passions become more important than SELF. Because I have been noticing this with myself lately where although I have been investing more time into my art which is cool, though, I have in a slight way have been neglecting the most important point which is ME and just working with myself on that Inner Deep level in a way where I am supporting ME within my Process of Personal Self Creation and Transformation and basically just working on WHO I AM in each and every breath.

In my last blog, I began looking into the words ‘Rest’ and ‘Relaxation’ and seeing how for me I had accepted a definition of these words that isn’t as supportive as it could be where I often find myself trying to rest by doing as little as possible, which I actually find more just ends up with me going into experiences of laziness, apathy, idleness and even depression, So in seeing this, I realized for myself that I can Re-define the word ‘Rest’ for myself so that it is more supportive and in this I see how ‘Resting’ doesn’t have to mean ‘doing as little as possible’ at all.

So essentially I see here that within my new definition and application of the word ‘Rest’ that I would like this application to be more engaging and active.

So today as I was out and about on my Sunday, I allowed myself to ‘be out’ and simply saw this as part of my process of ‘resting’ which I saw more as an opportunity to simply change my focus away from work for instance which I focus on all week, and turn my attention to something else.

So today I actually went on a small hike and so approached this whole event as a point of ‘Rest’, essentially taking my mind and myself out of my normal routine and doing something different.

So this is essentially in line how I am going to explore re-defining and living the word Rest for myself when I am off of work, and see how my overall physical and mental experience is. Where ‘Rest’ is no more ‘doing as little as possible’ which then becomes a kind of polar opposite to work, but rather I would like to explore living the word ‘Rest’ more within an engaging context where I am more active, participatory and engaged. I can see that already just in letting go of the pre-conceived idea I had accepted within myself about what the word ‘Rest’ meant, that I was able to enjoy my experience more today instead constantly thinking to myself that “I have to get home and rest” or that “this is not restful” because to me I had accepted ‘rest’ to be where ‘I did very little’. So yes, overall going to begin testing out this New Way of Resting where its doesn’t mean ‘doing as little as possible’ but where it is rather something more engaging, active, and supportive for me physically and mentally.

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So for the past week I have been noticing my shoulder being sore and tense and doing a bit of grinding when I move it in a particular way. My job can be quite physically demanding at time and no doubt puts stress on that shoulder on account of the ‘grinding’ I do each day where I am literally grinding away stone in creating stone sculptures. Its interesting how Art is often seen as a finished product and what is not seen is the actual process of creating it where in this case in creating stone sculptures, it is quite a physically demanding task and if one is not careful, they could end up causing damage to their physical body. Art easily becomes romanticized and the reality of it sometimes is not considered.

So this shoulder point can also serve as a reminder for me to not FORCE myself while I am at work, but rather to focus on carving/moving in a natural way.

I sometimes will end up forcing myself to try and move faster at work, and also in my life overall. And then what ends up happening is you end up injuring yourself. Well, not necessarily every time but in my case, I can see how my “pace” this last month with creating stone carvings was a bit more ‘driven’ then usual, which I see may have contributed to the soreness/injury. Where there was a kind of anxiety within me of feeling like I needed to get everything done quickly.

I find one reason I go into this Forcing Pace is because of FEAR. Where I am trying to make up for lost time or often where I am driven by a Fear of Running out of money, which I see is a point that I have faced on many occasions these past 4 years since the point of creating an art business began to take shape and become a reality.

Recently a new opportunity opened up where I suddenly experience more of a pressure to ‘create more art faster’. So this is also another dimension of this point where I go to quickly and start forcing myself within my expression and application. This dimension is the dimension of impatience, where, its like I have a few projects on my plate and I just want to get them all done asap where there is a kind of anxiety around the process of completing the work. And so in this case with the new opportunity I can see an eagerness to get the art done that is requested, yet here also I do see FEAR, a fear of the opportunity not working out and so I just want to get everything done as quick as I can as a point of Trying to make sure everything works out but doing this out of impatience and fear that “things just won’t turn out”

So my Shoulder is now forcing me to slow down and to be patient – Lol which is funny because now I am my own Patient, supporting myself in the healing process of this shoulder injury.

Here’s an interesting question. What happens if I just Slow Down, and stop rushing and just sloooow myself right down in my Self Creation and Business Creation Process? Would things fall apart? Would I run out of money? Or would things remain Stable?

So here this blog is a point of bringing into my awareness this tendency I have to allow myself to be driven by anxiety, and the consequences that this can have on my life and my physical body also.

And so to assist and support myself to breathe and let that anxiety go if I see it coming up, and to practice moving and directing myself at a Natural Supportive Pace, knowing and understanding that eventually things will get done through consistent application. And establishing this point of moving at a natural pace within my Business and Life and Self Creation Process.

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discovering and developing their utmost potentialeqafe.com – Invest in a wide range of Interviews and Support yourself to Self PerfectionJourney To Life Blogs – Read the blogs from those walking the 7 year journey to life.Self and Living – Practical Living Support To Live to Your Utmost Potential

Today my overall presence of myself was “Okay” Today was my ‘Monday’ as the first day of the work week and I split my time between carving and painting. I had a busy weekend with some responsibilities to take care of and I did direct those responsibilities and so it did “lift some weight off my shoulders”

Sometimes I have noticed when facing certain responsibilities that I will kind of build everything up into a kind of pressure bubble, and then afterwards its like the bubble pops and I go into the opposite polarity experience, so if things are busy, then I will go into a lull of sorts and I find for this weekend in facing a ‘busy weekend’ that I wanted to practice just walking through the points without polarizing the whole thing which for me often leads to unsupportive habits/patterns. So what Id like to work on is actually walking through points, sorting them out, directing them, processing them, and being Constant within this. And within this Breathing and just continuing to DIRECT the point and all the dimensions involved until its DIRECTED AND CLEAR. Sometimes I will get half way through points and crash. Or sometimes I will get half way through a day, or a week, and then crash.

So this application and process of being more ‘even’ if something that I at times struggle with. Especially with “busy days” when I have ‘more than usual’ responsibilities. So in the past I have lived out this polarity point where things become pressurized and I just try to get through it to the otherside where then I go into extreme relaxation mode, which I see actually isn’t even enjoyable and is more just an energy playout.

So the correction for this point is to focus rather on just taking it one day at a time and moving myself to embrace the tasks, events, and responsibilities of my day rather than fight with them. So within this, I can see I can support myself by not “looking at the other side” which I often do where I will project and imagine into the future when “I will be free” and have “spare time” and then I will end up focusing on that instead of just walking day by day and moment by moment and utilizing my time effectively and seeing tasks, projects, and responsibilities through into completion.

I often look at how I can take on more in my reality and have struggled with this. I often desire free-time where I can relax and just enjoy myself and there are times where I try and seek out free time but I can see how this is more of me just wanting to escape my reality and my responsibilities.

This what I am writing about today applies to this word ‘prioritizing’ as well because here I am looking at ways and creating ways to Face and Direct my Responsibilities of my life more FULLY and DIRECTIVE through into Completion, so Here I am I reminding myself also again of the commitment I made to Live this word “Prioritizing” where not only am I creating a more structured order of what needs to be done, but the KEY is I am actually doing it!

When I end up in a polarizing experience of being really busy and then going into extreme relax mode, I just Stop Everything, So here I see what Id like to develop and create is a way to just be more Consistent and Directive and ACTIVE within my day because that “extreme relaxation” is really not a supportive experience and also not actually relaxing either. So I do have to practice being “Active” and Engaged more fully with my day where I am Here, Clear, and Present through an ENTIRE day instead of sneaking off into or indulging in my mind or some experience. Can I make it through an entire Month without crashing? How about a week? “How about a day? So this point of consistency is really the word for todays blog as a way to apply myself instead of going into “extreme relax mode” or that point of where I don’t walk my responsibilities or my day or week through into completion but just only go half way and then give up.

Okay so I have pulled out a few words in this blog but the ones that ring the truest for tonight is the words CONSTANT, COMPLETION, as well as the word PATIENCE as words I can Develop in my Living to support me in developing my effectiveness at being Directive each day and walking all the points in my life through into completion instead of just giving up half way and retreating into my mind or experiences or comfort zones. Patience and Constancy.

Okay going to leave it here for tonight.

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discovering and developing their utmost potentialeqafe.com – Invest in a wide range of Interviews and Support yourself to Self PerfectionJourney To Life Blogs – Read the blogs from those walking the 7 year journey to life.Self and Living – Practical Living Support To Live to Your Utmost PotentialDIP Lite – Free Online Course to get you started with learning the Tools of Self SupportDIP PRO -A Desteni Course for those Ready to Walk the Journey of a Lifetime

Today I have been looking at and opening up the word “Progression” And interestingly enough, here I am, at the end of the evening where an experience of stress came up because I have essentially run out of time and am not able to continue ‘progressing’ so to speak.

So with this experience it actually brings up another dimension of this word progression because for me in Living and Expressing this word ‘Progression’ in a Supportive Way implies that one would NOT be left in an experience of stress at the end of the evening, whether one ‘runs out of time’ or not.

So for me this stress is related to having a few different points that are ‘high priority’ all aligning at the same time in my life right now and I am now having to leave some of these points un-directed at the end of the day.

I am satisfied with my movement today in terms of being consistent and directive with myself and not going into procrastination, however still there are points left undirected and so now I have to ‘let them go’ until tomorrow or until I can get to them.

I can see that if I accept and allow this ‘stress’ experience that came up this evening that that is just going to tire me out even more because now my body is in a state of stress and kind of twisting around on the inside. My back-chat is

“oh fuck, I am not going to get this done”

“this is not good”

“shit things are going to go bad”

And more such back-chats within this nature.

Now all of these things that “I have to get done” are somewhat of an accumulation of things that is connected also with my movements this past week or month or even year, and so I understand that being consistent with for instance Creating Progression, is necessary, but also I understand that there must be a balance when things just don’t go exactly as planned and other points open up and new projects open up and the priority list shifts around, and so Living the Word Progression I can see relates to being consistent but also being able to ‘let things go’ at the end of the night and not obsessing about things but rather allowing yourself to be okay with what one did accomplish.

I can see a tendency within me to obsess about things that “I haven’t gotten to yet”

And I also see that I still do tend to procrastinate when I do have available time instead of Directing Myself in become a more effective Creator of my Life so to speak, and so these are 2 dimensions that I see I can include in my re-definition of this word ‘Progression’ that I brought up this morning as a Word for me to practice Living today.

I can see even as a write this blog, that I am “thinking ahead” and wanting to get onto the next thing on my list.

Here I see a Correction is necessary because Real Progression is done when one is walking in Self Awareness within the Task at Hand, because then this way, they are more deliberate, clear, and Specific in the task and I do see that this is more Supportive in ones Living ones Utmost Potential and ensuring to get the most out each moment.

So within Living this word Progression, I am seeing this point of making sure that one do not RUSH or start jumping and thinking ahead is important because then one MISS THE POINT Entirely, which is to BE HERE.

So here “Progression” isn’t necessarily about accomplishing tasks, which is initially how I had framed it. Rather “Progression” is about being HERE and Walking in SELF AWARENESS in each moment and breath.

That way one move and Progress in ones Day with Awareness.

Essentially, any Step of Progression one make, must be done within and as Self Awareness. And if I start stressing out, than I am not really progressing at that stage, but more just regressing into my mind

So moving forward I am going to shift my definition a bit and now look at and consider this aspect of how to Live the word Progression, where it isn’t so much just about completing tasks but rather about completing tasks WITH AWARENESS and Self Presence.

Okay So still some adjustments and points to explore here but will end the blog here for tonight.

SOUL – The School of Ultimate Living is an online community of people interested in
discovering and developing their utmost potentialeqafe.com – Invest in a wide range of Interviews and Support yourself to Self PerfectionJourney To Life Blogs – Read the blogs from those walking the 7 year journey to life.Self and Living – Practical Living Support To Live to Your Utmost PotentialDIP Lite – Free Online Course to get you started with learning the Tools of Self SupportDIP PRO -A Desteni Course for those Ready to Walk the Journey of a Lifetime

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sigh and give up, meaning where within my sigh, I accept and allow myself to actually give up in that moment and give into the mind, as all the inner justifications as voices in the head that come up in relation to Walking my Life and Facing the Challenges of my life where I will reach moments where I will, in a single sigh, actually within that sigh be giving into those justifications and the mind and in a way be making the statement of “I give up”, “I can’t handle this” “this is too much”

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to not notice how many small moments there actually are where I have been giving up on myself, that happens for instance within me making some sound or speaking a single sentence, that has the signature of “me giving up on myself” instead of the signature of “I Stand, and I commit myself to Take Responsibility for Myself and My Life until ALL Life is Equal and Supported into Living and Being our Utmost Potential”

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to hold my body in such a way where I want to manipulate my partner to “see how difficult my life is” where in essence I am again giving into the mind and into the idea that I have created within myself that is actually a limitation that “my life is so hard” and “my life is so difficult” and so I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to attempt to manipulate my partner to in a way have pity on me and in having pity on me validate my limitation as the idea that “my life is so challenging and difficult” and that “its so tough for me”

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to have accepted that “my life is too tough for me”

I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to believe a though in my head that tells me “my life is too tough for me” and “I can’t do it” instead of seeing realizing and understanding that I have created myself and my life, and so if I created it, I am equal to it and can Change and Re-create it and myself.

I commit myself to assist and support myself to be aware of these small nuances within me such as a sigh, or how I hold my body, so to make sure that I am not within my posture or sighs, be giving in and giving up on myself in relation to Walking My Life and Walking my Process of moving from Consciousness to Awareness.

When and as I see myself sighing, or changing my body posture as a point of giving up on myself, I stop and I breathe. I see, realize, and understand that when I do this, that I am actually accepting and allowing myself to give up on myself and not directing myself to Live to My Utmost Potential, and so I commit myself to be more aware of these moments so that I can Take back my Directive Principle of Myself in a way where I am improving myself and developing myself and practicing Living in a way that Supports me within my utmost potential. I also see that when I allow myself to participate in these subtle moments of Giving up on myself and Giving into the Mind through sighing or holding my body posture in a certain way so others see how challenging my life is, I see that in doing this that I am missing Opportunities as Moments to Practice STANDING UP and Taking Responsibility for Myself and My life and in this Support myself to DIRECT Myself and My Reality much more effectively and so in these moments, I commit myself to Breath and Stand Here in FULL Awareness and not give in and sink into the mind but rather Practice Standing in such moments, Breathing and Directing Myself to Continue on Moving myself Practically in my Physical Reality doing what ever it is that is Here to do and Direct and so in this Develop my Stand and my Effectiveness in Practical Living, something that I have observed diminishes through accumulated moments of giving into the mind through allowing oneself to give up through sighing and also using ones body posture to manipulate others to see “how tough things are for me” I commit myself to FOR MYSELF Meet my Challenges through by Not Sighing, but rather through by Breathing, remaining Stable, and aware within myself realizing that the challenges of my life aren’t just going to go away by some miracle but that I am Responsible for Myself and my LIFE Completely.

The Points I am writing about in this blog came up as I listened to the following interview Series

For the past three days my partner and I have decided to make an adjustment to our “internet usage”.

Our starting point for this was to change how we use the internet which we observed had become abusive and diminishing in nature where a lot of how we were using it was for entertainment and distraction.

For me personally this has been something I have been wanting to do for a while but just never ventured to do. So the rules of our engagement were that we were to stop

“Mindless Scrolling”

“TV Series and Movies”

“Searching for Distraction”

“No Sports Highlights” (this one was more for me)

“No Games”

And that’s about it, and that we would take this on for 1 week.

I wanted to see how this would go and what I would do with myself.

Ultimately the point is to Support ourselves to develop Supportive Movement and to create a way to break from that automated behavior of just magnetically grabbing your phone and checking to see whats up, which does not bring the Most out of me.

So now when ever this experience or urge comes within me, I am faced with actually having to DECIDE what to do with myself and to make sure that that Decision is doing something supportive.

Its amazing actually how much time I wasted EVERY NIGHT on “mindless scrolling” and checking the hockey highlights.

So now instead of just going for the phone and sinking in, I have to be much more deliberate and aware within myself with regards to what I am going to do.

So we will walk the 1 week and see how it goes and see how we can adjust the point afterwards to make sure that we just don’t revert back to the old behavior.

So ya, so far it has been interesting in those moments where that urge comes up within me to “check my phone” and that desire to just scroll through my facebook because I don’t actually really want to have to Make a Decision with Awareness. So within doing this I can also support myself to overall Slow down and just be Here and check in with my experience and body instead of diverting my attention into my computer. So rather I can focus my attention on Myself, on HERE, on my Presence, on my Physical Body, and just Breath and Practice SELF AWARENESS where I see my internet use has definitely become a practice of Self Distraction and Separating myself as my attention from Myself. Even after just 3 days I have already noticed more of a Presence within myself during the Evenings which for me where the “problem periods” where I just get home from work and dive into the computer and only come up for air every now and then.

Definitely recommend to the Scrollers out there to give it a shot…..you know you want to.